I watched a number of ‘how to make pasta’ videos and tutorials on Youtube, also finding a variety of recipes for pasta dough in my recipe books and online. I ended up following a combination. My ingredient measurements came from The Cook’s Book – my version must be older as it has a different cover but I’m sure this is the same book. The video that provided most guidance was by Jacob Burton here.
For 2 people (main course servings)
165g “00” pasta flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt – I didn’t use salt in the dough as a video somewhere said as long as your boiling water is salty enough it will be fine.
I was concentrating so hard on my first attempt at making pasta that I didn’t photograph every step but the video linked shows you everything you need to do really well.
I was worried that my dough wasn’t soft enough but after the 40 minutes left in cling film (plastic wrap) to hydrate it had definitely softened.
This was actually only half of the dough ball rolled out to the second smallest roll. I didn’t roll it down to the thinnest as I didn’t think I needed to. As advised on Jacob Burton’s video I kept the other sections of dough I was not working with wrapped in the plastic wrap until I need them.
My pasta maker came with the Deluxe add on which is two pasta shapes, one is a fine linguine shape and the other is tagliatelle. And just like that… Pasta!
Make sure the pasta strands are evenly coated with pasta flour once they are cut to prevent them sticking together like a few of mine did. I left them on the worktop while I prepared my seafood medley and sauce for the pasta and it didn’t dry out in that time. Online forums suggest that you keep your fresh pasta in an airtight container so it can keep up to months.
I had a Linguine al Frutti di Mare in mind which is one of my absolute favourites from Carluccio’s. I had some frozen prawns and scallops already so really only needed to add the squid rings.
